Kanto SYD Bluetooth Speaker Demo & Product Tour

When Kanto Audio presented their new SYD high quality bluetooth speaker system at the Axpona audio show in Chicago, 2018 we got to talking about it with them.

Their Marketing Manager, Brett Smalley was kind enough to ship us a unit for review and a giveaway so we made a bunch of videos that documented our deep dive into the Kanto SYD before we held the sweepstakes giveaway in July this year.

Here is the full transcript of our Kanto SYD Demo video, in case you find the closed-captions a little hard to read on Youtube.

Kanto SYD Demonstration

So what you're looking at here is Kanto's SYD system. It's a Bluetooth powered speaker system and what that means is the amplifiers are inside and all you have to do is for a couple source.

Kanto is a relative newcomer to the world of audio, but they've become popular quickly because they built small speakers for apartments, for dorm rooms these were stereo speaker systems and they were well built, have that look of a studio monitor and they've carried that over to this all-in-one system called SYD.

What you're looking at is everything you get when you purchase a SYD, which includes the remote control, a very complete product manual, an auxiliary input and a power cord.

All The Inputs

Now it has an optical input on the back, so you'll have to get your own optical input (cable) it also has an RCA input which is going to go to your CD player maybe your TV or gaming device. But it also switches over a phono, and this is one of the nice parts of Kanto and SYD.

They built these systems to be set up that if you're collecting vinyl, which a lot of people are doing now, have a turntable you can plug it in. Additionally, it even has a ground on the back which is something that goes back to the old days of stereo.

It comes in four colors, it comes in a White, a Burgundy, an almost Pinkish color and a black. The system overall is built really for that person where sound quality is more important than volume output.

What they're looking to do here is give real pristine sound with the soft dome tweeters, the Kevlar woofers so in terms of decibel level, this may not equal some of the boom boxes out there but the quality of sound is exceptional. We loved it.

SYD Full Description

"What have you got to show us?" So what we've got here is Kanto's new SYD system.

The speaker is about 17 inches long, it's powered which means you don't need an amplifier or anything else to go along with it. You've got a volume control and a switcher here and indicator lights that tell you what's going on.

If you want to see beyond Bluetooth which this thing is built for, something as simple as connecting your iPhone, your iPad, a stereo cassette, an iPod, it's a simple plugin to get yourself rockin and rollin'.

So I just turned on my Apple music. Turn up the volume and I'm ready to go. So again, the nice part here is for analog devices, whether you're listening to

cassettes, CDs, anything along those lines, you can plug into this thing. If you want to go into your TV or into your gaming system, you'll have to pay for this (optical cable), but you're gonna buy yourself the proper length of our optical cable.

Last but not least what the system was built for it is Bluetooth, and Bluetooth can be connected through your iPhone, it can be connected through your iPad.

The Remote Control In Use

And then once everything's running what's nice about it is they've got a remote control that does double duty as really a systems integrator, it sort of makes everything work and I'll give you a simple example.

You know as I turn up the volume I get where I want to be. I can boost the treble, I can boost the bass. You're always getting an indicator light over here telling you what's going on.

So let's push him to maximum, let's take the volume up a little bit. So if I feel like that's too much, you can bring bass and treble back to flat. So that's a really nice feature. In addition to that you can pair multiple Bluetooth devices here.

You've also got balance left to right and center, so it's a really complete little remote control. So let's take a second here, pause what's going on.

So basically that was an analogue connection to Apple songs on my device. Whether it's Spotify, Tidal, anything you use, you can connect directly into this and start playing Music.

Sound Demo With BBC Maida Vale Recordings

Now one of the things that we did was we loaded some tracks on here that were recorded I think in 1999, were actually recorded at the BBC, so these are raw and master tracks.

We've connected via bluetooth. It should be as simple as… So I'll set a volume level here. But I still have control of the volume here Again, just for fun let's boost the treble. That's bringing it back to flat. So volume controls are easy to set. You're ear does that for you. But treble and bass should be used sparingly.

Round-up

This speaker system sounds just fine, putting out plenty of bass. If you want an easy-to-use system that can work with anything, and hey, last thing I forgot to tell you is: As easy as it is to use with all these devices, it has a phono input on the back so if you have a turntable, want to use it within the system, optical is for your TV, for your gaming system and then two ways to do analogue, a small 3.5 mini jack and standard RCA cables. See our full SYD Review page for all the specifications.

So our take on it is, it's a nifty product it comes with a stand we set it up in 30 seconds or less and we're rockin and rollin'. We went between an analog source we flipped over to Bluetooth, so it all works very efficiently and the remote controls are real big help.